Annapolis Maritime Museum & Park — Attraction in Annapolis

We chose the Annapolis Maritime Museum in the fall of 2023 for our daughter's June 2025 wedding because of its beautiful location on the Severn River. The venue manager described how wedding guests could have multiple wedding experiences by using the indoor educational museum, the beautiful art room, the outside deck and piers overlooking the water, and the grassy side yard with a historic boat, platform for a bar, and at the lapping water's edge. All of this seemed idyllic and Paige, the venue manager, was so experienced and helpful.

Disaster struck in September of 2024, when Paige informed us that she had regretfully left her position at the museum. The past nine months have been a revolving door of people that have held the venue manager position with little transfer of knowledge and poor communication. Never once did the museum contact us when there was a new person hired as the venue manager, and we only found out that a new person was in the job when our voicemails and emails went unanswered. This instability created mistrust as we were consistently told "don't worry, it will be fine" and it consistently wasn't. Even on the day of the wedding, there were personnel changes to our site supervisor and I spent the morning making sure that a large ugly music stage and stairs were removed from the side yard and that wood chips were placed to cover the bare dirt that now encompassed a large swath of what was once the beautiful boat and platform for the bar area. This should not have been happening on the morning of the wedding, as we had been trying to get a plan for this unexpected change to the yard addressed for the previous month. This is just one example of how the staff instability and lack of coordination among remaining staff created unnecessary confusion and stress throughout the months leading up to the wedding.

There are some people who deserve shout-outs! Kudos to Donny for his willingness to be helpful with the physical set-up and to the historic skipjack Wilma Lee team for an enjoyable rehearsal day celebration cruise.

Unfortunately, our final memories of the museum are a two week, too late return phone call from the president of the museum (because she was out of the country) after we had left an urgent message on her work phone asking for her personal intervention, and a one month delay in the return of the wedding venue security deposit after repeated requests.

Don't be fooled by the beauty of the venue which was overshadowed by the museum's lack of coordination and responsiveness during the time leading to the wedding. Management knew that there were concerns and never once did they ask what they could have done better nor did they say they were sorry. The sales pitch is great, but there are problems...

My husband and I had a courthouse wedding earlier this year but still wanted to celebrate with our family and friends at some point. We went to a rehearsal dinner at the Museum a couple of years ago and I fell in love with it. So, when we decided we wanted to have the celebration in Annapolis (my husband's hometown) I only looked at one venue. The Museum is just so unique, low-key, and genuinely Annapolis. I also loved giving our venue money to a Museum and good cause. Once we met Paige to tour the venue and knew our date was available, we were set. Paige was very responsive to our request to set up a meeting and flexible with our limited availability to meet (we do not live in the area).

Since we were already married we did not have a ceremony at the Museum, just a December reception for 126 guests starting at 6pm. When you tour the space, it seems like the capacity of 150 would be tight, but we ended up having plenty of room. It was also daylight when we toured the space, so were bummed that it would be dark by the time our guests arrived and they wouldn't really get the water views, but the venue looked GORGEOUS at night. We went with all white tables, chairs, tablecloths, plateware, etc and gold accents (framed pictures, table numbers, vases, votives, etc) and white and green bouquets and it looked amazing. We had two heaters outside on the tented deck and guests loved being out there for the raw bar, drinks, apps, dessert, etc. I loved that we didn't have to worry about weather - it was nice that it didn't rain/snow for outdoor pictures prior but it would not have put a damper on the main event at all!

I could go on and on about how perfect the venue was. So many guests asked us how we found it. The only downsides (which I'm not going to dock any points for since we knew all of this going in) were that the party has to end by 10pm and that buses can't get all the way down to the venue. Could not...

I have to take a moment to thank the awesome team at the Annapolis Maritime Museum for being such all stars both during the wedding planning process on our big day. My husband and I fell in love with the museum at our first visit with Cindy. It's just a special, super neat space. We loved the more industrial feel and it was definitely the "Annapolis", non-hotel, waterfront location that we were looking for. It was the first venue we looked at the one we compared all other site visits to.

Even though the space is relatively compact space, it definitely works for a big event. We had 150 guests plus a band and sit down dinner and were able to make the number work comfortably by breaking down a few tables after dinner to give us some breather room for dancing. The newly tented deck is gorgeous. And despite the fact that it ended up snowing on our wedding day in April(!!!), we were able to bring in space heaters at the last minute and it made the space completely usable all night even with temperatures in the 30s (note: that took three industrial space heaters, rented through Absolute Party Rental who were also great!).

I will admit that I was a higher maintenance bride. I think I made at least 10 visits to the museum pre-wedding and that's being conservative. The patience, kindness and partnership extended to me by Cindy and Paige was absolutely amazing. They made me feel like our day was important in the midst of the hundreds of other events and activities going on at the museum. They were such a pleasure to work with and our trust in them was well deserved. When it was all said and done, our wedding day was perfect and flawless and I couldn't thank these ladies enough for that. I would highly recommend the Annapolis Maritime Museum as a fantastic wedding venue and look forward to going to many other events there in the...